Category: Winter 2014/15

Introduction
Like everyone else I used Wikipedia a lot, but this time I could experience the project from the other side by writing an own article. I edited a Wikipedia article about my father who is also a known artist in the south of Germany. On the one hand it met the course’s requirements as a social-scientific topic and on the other hand I had access to a lot of material, which I could use for the article. Moreover, the artist could improve his public relations and increase his value at the art market. Continue reading “My first Wikipedia article”

Nowadays everyone knows Wikipedia (WP). It is the reference point for gathering quick information about almost any topic we can imagine. Wikipedia provides information about topics from A to Z to its users, no matter if scientific or about an everyday life topic. Almost every topic that is considered relevant for public interest is covered by a WP article. When looking up a certain topic on Google, the first information you get is most often from Wikipedia. Therefore, it may be claimed that Wikipedia offers the biggest pooled collection of information that is available in today’s world. However, despite the fact that there is no broader collection of knowledge than Wikipedia, we apparently perceive limits of relevance. For everyday use, WP may be the best device of finding the information we search. But does this hold true for scientific research as well? Can the information provided on WP be in fact a reliable source for academic purposes? Continue reading “Getting Familiar with Wikipedia: Scientific Value or Just Warm Words?”

Writing my first own Wikipedia article

First Thoughts and Preparation

When it came to writing my first Wikipedia article, the first question was the subject it should be about. Our requirement was to choose a topic which had to be relevant, liberal arts oriented and there had to be enough literature about it. That led me to check the core principles of Wikipedia again, where notability and verifiability are two important points. For my article I chose the theme of a seminar paper I wrote a semester before, which is a poem of the famous German poet Eduard Mörike: “Der alte Turmhahn”. Due to the German content, I wrote my article in German. Checking the relevance, I had a look at the parent page of Eduard Mörike, where the most important works are listed. “Der alte Turmhahn” was mentioned but not further described and therefore I wanted to fill this gap. To verify my words I needed both primary and secondary literature.

When I had first started the class of “Wikipedia and the Humanities” I viewed Wikipedia more as an easy-search, easy-access lexicon without thinking much about how the entire system behind it works. After a semester spent learning about the history and intricacies of Wikipedia, taking a closer look at the guidelines for writing and in the end of the course becoming a published author on Wikipedia myself, my opinions on the open web lexica have changed drastically.

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Dieses Blog beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie der Umgang mit Wikipedia die literaturwissenschaftliche Praxis in Forschung und Lehre verändert. Es setzt sich ebenfalls in literaturwissenschaftlicher Hinsicht mit den theoretischen Prinzipien der Wikipedia auseinander. Es begleitet das Seminar "Wikipedia als literaturwissenschaftliches Instrument" im Master Europäische Literaturen der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
This blog deals with the way wikipedia modifies teaching and research for historians and theoricians of literature. It also aims at confronting its theoretical principles with those of classical literary theory. The contributions are conceived and written by students and teacher of the class "Wikipedia as an instrument in literary history and theory" given at the Humboldt-University in Berlin in the summer term of 2013.